Plan comfortable shoes for the week: it’s another inundation of art fairs and satellite events.

Thankfully, Frieze and SPRING/BREAK’s new Brooklyn offshoot are the only big fairs we’re recommending by now, so fair fatigue shouldn’t be too much of a problem. But of course, the city is packed with art star openings, book launches, and more brunches than you can shake a croissant at. We’ve done you the favor of skimming only the best of the best events this week though, to save you from too much overload.

Highlights include Roxy Paine’s creepy interiors at Paul Kasmin Tuesday night, Martin Roth’s Twitter-fed lavender farm at the Austrian Cultural Forum on Wednesday, and Jon Rafman’s screening and book launch at Printed Matter on Thursday. If you’re not fair-pooped after Friday, check out Salon 94’s demon-wrestling solo show from Jayson Musson (of “Hennessy Youngman” fame) on Saturday and Columbia MFA candidates paying tribute to Walter Benjamin at the Jewish Museum on Sunday.

So far, 2017 might be one of the shittiest years in recent decades for the women of America, but New York’s art world is making sure this will be a Women’s History Month to remember. On Thursday, the New Museum is even hosting a talk on Feminist topics we haven’t even heard of: A.K. Burns will be leading a discussion on “Quantum Feminism”. That same night, Van DebEd is hosting Women’s History Month Invitational in Long Island City.

Kick the weekend off playing artist-designed Feminist games at Bushwick’s SOHO20 Gallery Friday night. Saturday, Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham will discuss feminist icon Marilyn Minter’s show at the Brooklyn Museum. After a week of edifying female-empowering events, head to Interference Archive’s Sunday afternoon Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon to make sure it all goes down in herstory.

Just when you thought the Trump administration couldn’t bring any more reality TV drama: Duff Goldman, of Food Network’s Ace of Cakes fame, claims Trump’s inauguration cake was a plagiarism of the cake he sculpted for President Obama in 2009. [Facebook]

Groups including Canadian, British, and French citizens were denied entry to the United States, fingerprinted, searched, and photographed by border agents after disclosing their intentions to attend the Women’s March on Washington. GO FREEDOM! [The Independent]

Oh man, I wish I could’ve gone to Marilyn Minter and Madonna’s talk at the Brooklyn Museum. The two discussed feminism, aging as a woman artist, and Trump, among other topics. [artnet News]

Graffiti writer KATSU has demonstrated his newest model tagging-drone with the phrase “SCUM TRUMP”. The technology still seems pretty far-off from making things that look nice, but it could offer politically-minded street artists access to hard-to-reach places like billboards. [New Atlas]

In other anti-Trump art news, Jaden Smith and Shia LaBeouf have installed a camera on the side of the Museum of the Moving Image to livestream participants repeating “He will not divide us” for the duration of Trump’s presidency. [Billboard]

With the future of the NEA in doubt, the editors of ARTnews have compiled a list of key battles from the Culture Wars that gutted American art funding. Seriously, sometimes it is so embarrassing to have to explain to people from other countries why Americans can’t have nice things. [ARTnews]

Let’s face it—the bulk of this week’s chatter in the art world isn’t going to be about Donald Trump’s Inauguration, but Marilyn Minter and Madonna’s talk Thursday evening at the Brooklyn Museum lamenting it. And that’s as it should be. Resistance to this new presidency is essential.
Friday, we’ll be participating in the #J20 Art Strike, so no content on our website will be available but for a livestream of Rachel Mason lip synching the inauguration as FutureClown. Those seeking to participate in the art protests can head to the Whitney where Occupy Museums will be hosting a “Speak Out”.

Other than that, we’re recommending a show about soul crushing anxiety and despair at LUBOV, and a show called “Infected Foot” at Greene Naftali, because sickness also seems like an appropriate theme for the week. Sorry to be depressing. Unfortunately, there’s no other honest way to paint the events.

Despite the misogynistic horror of Donald Trump’s campaign and eventual election victory, 2016 was a great year for women in the art. There were compelling solo exhibitions by women artists in major institutions, a copious list of all-women group shows and dynamic revivals of unfairly overlooked female artists’ careers. It seems like 2016 marked the return of much-needed 1990’s-style “girl power.”

Granted, there’s still a long way to go for equal representation, particularly for women artists of color. But, hopefully, this is just the beginning. To celebrate this year’s exciting and timely return to feminism, I selected the ten best shows featuring women in 2016. Results below:

Feminism isn’t easy to pin down. It’s a social movement that shares a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, and social rights for women. It’s famously defined by waves (first, second and third) that only a few of us can fully explain without referencing Wikipedia.

For me, feminism is characterized less by the social movement it describes, than by woman who chose for themselves what they like, what they want, and who they are. It’s simple, and that’s part of why I like it. It’s inclusive, and it can be fun, pleasurable and charming—all qualities of the most infectious and influential kinds of movements.

As it happens, this is exactly the strength of “Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest”, the New Museum’s 30 retrospective of the artist’s videos curated by Massimiliano Gioni.

This week starts off slow, presumably to give those of us who were at the Miami fairs a bit of time to recover. Today we’ve listed Ballet at the Brooklyn Museum and Faith Ringgold at MoMA and that’s it. Thursday, look out. Chelsea will be a zoo. We’ve listed Michelle Grabner and Andrew Kuo as picks, but there’s plenty more to see. Friday head to Bushwick. Every gallery and their dog is hosting an opening, including Parlour and Interstate. We recommend picking up a few Christmas presents at some of these galleries. Emerging art is very affordable, and your parents will either love it or give it back to you. Either way, that’s a win-win scenario.

The Canadian singer and poet Leonard Cohen has died at the age of 82. Let’s pay our respects to the man by listening to “There Is a War”. It seems appropriate right now. [YouTube]

A topical discussion between journalist Christopher Borrelli and Coya Paz, Director of Free Street Theater in Chicago, “If art can’t fix problems, what good is it?” Art is still important. Keep making it and we’ll keep paying attention. [Chicago Tribune]

Roberta Smith affectionately calls Marilyn Minter “A ‘Nasty Woman’ of Contemporary Art” in a great review of her exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. [The New York Times]

A rogue artist therapist set up shop in the 14th Street subway tunnel between Sixth and Seventh Avenues this Wednesday and asked people to share their thoughts on the election via sticky note. About 1500 people participated and those notes were stuck to the subway wall. [Gothamist]

Lise Ragbir, director of the Warfield Center Gallery at the University of Texas at Austin, writes about the importance of exhibition space devoted to art and stories about struggle. Concerning The Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture, “true, there is something disconcerting about housing a Michael Jackson costume and 10 shards of stained glass from the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in the same space.” [TIME]

A new Tumblr, “why we’re afraid”, tracks the surge of hate crimes that have escalated since Trump was elected. I (Michael) personally know two people who have been attacked by Trump supporters in the past 24 hours. This is terrifying. [why we’re afraid]

Critics are complaining that the lede in this auction report describes a shockingly insulated and privileged group. “There were no signs of a post-Brexit or Donald Trump election victory backlash in the art market tonight as, fairly predictably, every lot found a buyer in the first of Sotheby’s three-part, two-day sale of the David Bowie collection.” I’m going to save my outrage for other matters. [artnet News]

Steve Jansen theorizes that arts and culture flourish when a Republican is in the oval office, because artists and musicians are inspired by hardship and a rebellious spirit. It’s a compelling argument. But, like, not if we’re all dead. [Houston Press]

If ever there was a week for art nerds, this is it. It begins Tuesday with a screening of artist made music-videos Otion Front Studio and a show of meticulously assembled abstract paper works by Jessica Dickinson and Alison Knowles at James Fuentes. Paper nerds and music nerds unite. By Friday, gallery goers will be heading to Transfer Gallery to witness a room full of projectors showcasing a playlist of works by a dozen or more new media artists. New Media nerds rejoice.

In between all this nerdery, there are also quite a few exhibitions promising a good time, not the least of which being our very own Strange Genitals, which opens this Thursday at AICAD. Following this, is the always provocative Marilyn Minter at the Brooklyn Museum come Friday and Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw’s performance looking at how the relationship between gravity and politics leads to the break-down of thought. Catron and Outlaw promise an “assembly of libations” after their performance, so don’t make any plans for Sunday.